Comparison Operators

The following table describes each comparison operator and its return values.

Table 1. Comparison operators

Operator

Description

Returns

=

Equal to. Functionally equivalent to == for compatibility with other languages.

TRUE or FALSE

==

Equal to. Functionally equivalent to = for compatibility with other languages.

TRUE or FALSE

!=

Not equal to. Functionally equivalent to <> for compatibility with other languages.

TRUE or FALSE

<>

Not equal to. Functionally equivalent to != for compatibility with other languages.

TRUE or FALSE

>

Greater than.

TRUE or FALSE

>=

Greater than or equal to.

TRUE or FALSE

<

Less than.

TRUE or FALSE

<=

Less than or equal to.

TRUE or FALSE

BETWEEN

Search criteria for a query where the value is between two values, including the end values specified in the range. Values can be numbers, text, or dates.

TRUE or FALSE

NOT BETWEEN

Search criteria for a query where the value is outside the range of two values, including the end values specified in the range. Values can be numbers, text, or dates.

TRUE or FALSE

LIKE

Match string with a wildcard expression. Use % for zero or more wildcards and _ to match any character at this place in a string.

The wildcard characters can be escaped by preceding them with a backslash (\). Backslash itself can also be escaped by preceding it with another backslash.

TRUE or FALSE

NOT LIKE

Inverse of LIKE. Return TRUE if string is not similar to given string.

TRUE or FALSE

IS NULL

Field has value of NULL.

TRUE or FALSE

IS NOT NULL

Field has value or is missing.

TRUE or FALSE

IS MISSING

No value for field found.

TRUE or FALSE

IS NOT MISSING

Value for field found or value is NULL.

TRUE or FALSE

IS VALUED

Value for field found. Value is neither missing nor NULL

TRUE or FALSE

IS NOT VALUED

Value for field not found. Value is NULL.

TRUE or FALSE

Strings

String comparison is done using a raw-byte collation of UTF-8 encoded strings (sometimes referred to as binary, C, or memcmp). This collation is case sensitive. Case-insensitive comparisons can be performed using the UPPER() or LOWER() functions. See String Functions for more information.

Arrays and Objects

Arrays are compared element-wise. Objects are first compared by length; objects of equal length are compared pairwise, with the pairs sorted by name.

NULL and MISSING

The IS/IS NOT NULL/MISSING family of operators lets you specify conditions based on the existence (or absence) of attributes in a data set.

Additionally, these comparison situations produce the following results.